Killer's 'Passion' confession: 'I was like a machine'

Killer's 'Passion' confession: 'I was like a machine'

ERIC HANSON, Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Published
5:30 am CDT, Thursday, August 12, 2004

RICHMOND - Jurors deciding the fate of Dan Leach II watched a chilling videotaped confession after he pleaded guilty to the carefully crafted murder of Ashley Wilson, which originally had been ruled a suicide.

On the tape, Leach said his confession was motivated in part by seeing the movie The Passion of the Christ, and he also described in exacting detail how he carried out his plan.

"I was like a machine with a program; I went in there and executed the program," Leach, 21, said to Fort Bend County sheriff's detectives.

The tape was played as evidence in the punishment phase of the trial, which continues today.

The guilty plea, which surprised some in the courtroom, brings to a close the first part of a case that authorities had ruled a suicide, a decision steadfastly contended by the victim's parents.

Because of the guilty plea, the jury is left with assessing a sentence, which could range from five years to life in prison.

In previous court appearances, Leach had pleaded not guilty even though he had confessed to the strangulation and had given jail house media interviews admitting his guilt in the Jan. 15 death near Richmond.

"It is time to think of Ashley Wilson and the life she was deprived of," Gilleland said. "Give a life sentence to Dan Leach to keep him off the streets."

Gonzalez asked the jurors for justice tempered by mercy and reminded them that the crime would have remained unsolved if Leach had not come forward.

"He had gotten away with it, but he could not live with the fact that he took a human life," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said Leach pleaded guilty because his client he wants to take responsibility for his crime. Gonzalez also said that if Leach had pleaded guilty earlier in the case, the defendant would have waived several rights in which Gonzalez felt should be retained right up until the time of the trial.

Mother testifies

One of the first witnesses was the victim's mother,
Renee Coulter
, who said she had become concerned because she had not talked to her daughter in several days and because Wilson had not withdrawn money from her bank account, as she usually did daily.

Coulter went to Wilson's apartment near Richmond and, using a key from a maintenance worker, unlocked the door.

Coulter said she knew immediately her daughter was dead because of the odor that permeated the room.

"I screamed, 'Oh my God, my baby is dead,' " Coulter said as she cried on the witness stand.

She also described how she and her husband, Dan Wilson, never believed the suicide ruling of police and the Harris County medical examiner.

The case remained closed until Leach suddenly showed up at sheriff's headquarters March 9 and confessed to the killing.

Leach's confession lasted nearly two hours, and he spoke calmly and precisely.

In the first few seconds of the tape, he matter-of-factly told detectives: "I am here to confess to the murder of Ashley Wilson."

Leach then recounted how he met Wilson in high school several years ago and reacquainted himself with her after he was discharged from the Air Force in August 2003.

He said they had sex one time and that she became pregnant with his child.

'I had an agenda'

Leach told police he considered Wilson, 19, to be immature and said he would be embarrassed if anyone learned he had a relationship with her. After weighing his options, he decided to kill her and stage the death to look like a suicide.

"I thought I could get away with it," he said.

He told police how he arrived at her apartment late on the night of Jan. 15 with a pair of gloves. Leach and Wilson talked for a while, and then he launched the first part of his plot, a ploy to get her to write something that could be construed as a suicide note.

"I had an agenda to try and get her to put something on paper for evidence of a suicide," he said.

Leach convinced her to write down things that were troubling her.

"She was highly uncomfortable with it," Leach said, referring to the paper that would subsequently help lead police to the suicide ruling.

Later in the confession, Leach told how he got the young woman to put a pillowcase over her head as part of a "trust exercise," in which she had to rely on senses other than sight.

'She never fought me'

In cold detail, Leach described how he was sitting behind Wilson on the bed with his legs wrapped around her upper body. After the pillowcase was over her head, he grabbed the cord from her graduation gown and wrapped it around her neck. Using his legs to keep her from fighting, he strangled her.

"I didn't want her to suffer, I wanted to asphyxiate her as quickly as possible," he told police. "She never fought me."

During Leach's account of the death, several family members of the victim and defendant broke down and cried.

When police asked Leach why he decided to confess, he answered that God would hold him accountable.

"I saw The Passion of the Christ, and that moved me," he said of the movie that depicts the last hours of the life of Christ.

Leach told police that Wilson did not deserve to die and said her parents should know that she did not take her own life.